[C320-list] 10 pound television

[Larry & Melissa]

Since more and more marinas are offering wifi (sometimes free) these days, we decided to invest in a SlingBox (www.slingbox.com). It is a small device that you connect to your set-top box at home that will broadcast your cable tv across the Internet. If you have a laptop (or iPad or Netbook, etc.) with Internet access, you can watch your home TV from anywhere. I also use it when I am on travel to catch home sports games. It is a one-time purchase, no monthly fee.

We've had modest success with it at marinas. Sometimes the wireless connection is not very good or sometimes the bandwidth is limited (you need about 1-2 Mbps download speed for the non-HD version). If the data rate slows down, the slingbox software tries to maintain the picture but at a reduced resolution resulting in a sometimes blurry picture. But when you have a good connection and acceptable bandwidth it works very well. We used it on our recent sailing trip to catch the US Open and a Ravens pre-season game.

Of course, my sailing friends ask me why I would want to watch TV when I'm going sailing :)

Larry
Easy Going, #609